I forgot!!

In my long, detailed, picture-ful post yesterday, I forgot one important thing ...

Yesterday was my blog's first birthday! I can't believe I've been on blogspot for a year ... I had a livejournal for a really long time before that, but I made the change during the other major change in our lives. It's crazy how, a year ago, I was freaking out about not being able to find a job, I was still working nights, and Mark was still fairly miserable. But it wasn't all bad. We lived close to my parents, which was nice, and we had some really good friends in Chattanooga (who I still miss a lot), and I really really loved my job.

But it was the right decision for us to move to Birmingham. For a lot of reasons. During the last several months, I've felt hopeful about our future for the first time in a while. Not the future of our relationship or anything ... just, Mark's job prospects. And our home owning prospects. And our future child prospects. This master's degree (along with Mark's two internships) should (And I do say SHOULD, because it's still going to be a rough search, I'm afraid) provide him with a good job. Should. I don't know where we'll go, or what we'll be doing exactly, and that thought still scares me a little bit. But in a way, I'm glad it's all happened the way it has. Those 2 years in Chattanooga gave me some time to "get used" to being married, and made cutting the umbilical cord completely a little bit easier. It took me a while to get used to being part of somebody else's family, if that makes sense. Now, I'm ready. Ready to move wherever we need to. Ready to start our own family (in a few years). Ready to plant our own roots. SO ready for that. I want to settle. And hopefully I'll only have to wait another year to be able to do that.

I am so proud of Mark. He currently has a 4.0, he's holding 2 solid internships right now (which hopefully he'll be able to continue for the duration of grad school), he's a published writer (in fact, he showed me one of his college papers that is now in Samford's special collection! Crazy!), he was recently chosen to be on the board of editors for UAB's historical journal ... his resume is good. His credentials will be good, when he finishes everything. He has totally taken the initiative with this grad school program - and he wants to be an archivist really, really, really badly. I hope so much that he can find a job doing that.

(Or we may both have to be committed to some sort of institution, and heavily medicated...)

We've still got another year before we see all of this come to fruition, and that's fine. I have my days, but most of the time I'm content with what we're doing here. I like my job - in fact, I'd love to be able to stay in Birmingham. We have a great place to live, Mark likes school and his internships and all that academic stuff (which I still miss so, so much sometimes). I'm being patient. Hopefully in another year, when my blog has its 2-year anniversary, we'll either be in the process of moving for Mark's job, or he'll just be starting one here in Birmingham. I'm excited to see what happens.

But until then ... I've got him. And that's perfect for now.